2084-C

Chris was standing in the magistrate's court once again. He had come to give evidence in defence of James Johnson. The female magistrate wore a purple lady's  suit, her hairstyle and accent giving the impression of one who had come from a privileged background, if it was possible to tell that someone had gone to a private school and a good university simply by appearance.
"Mr. Johnson, you are charged with providing sub standard rented accommodation in contravention of the 2076 Housing Act. You have pleaded not guilty. How many people do you have living in your house?"
"Twenty seven," said James.
"Is it not terribly overcrowded?"
"It's a big house. It has a total floor area of 450 M2 according to the estate agent's website. My tenant here has come to testify that I provide him with good and healthy accommodation." The magistrate looked at Chris.
"How many people do you share your room with?"
"When I first moved there, it was just me on a camp bed on my own but then the others moved in. I pay £3,000 a month to sleep on the camp bed and they pay £1,000 a month for a sleeping bag and a mat on the floor."
"Please, answer the question. It's very important. I need to know how many people sleep in the room."
"I admit that James has a dozen people in his front room but it's a big enough room. I know the house is on the outskirts of the city but it's 15 minutes walk from the bus station and lots of people wanted to live there."
"Is it noisy at night?"
"He gives all the residents earplugs. He has a variety of ear plugs, some people like wax, some people prefer foam, or you can get the silicon ones but we pull them into little bits to push them further into the ear. We all get a good night's sleep. And he's got all this stuff for washing people's ears out if they accumulate too much wax."
"Do you think your kitchen accommodation is of adequate size?"
"Nobody uses the kitchen. There's several good cafes and sandwich shops in the town centre."
"Is the house provided with a communal laundry facility?"
"He puts it in the big Nissan electric car and takes it to the laundry on a Saturday, 27 different suitcases of laundry, one for each person."
"What about toilets and bathrooms?"
"It's got 4 bathrooms."
"Is that enough for 27 people?"
"It's easy. If one of them is in use, you just have to go to one of the others. We all get up at different times. I can always find a shower or a toilet when I want one."
"There's no law on having more than one adult sharing the same bedroom," said James. "It's common practice."
"That is true, Mr. Johnson, it is quite common for more than one resident to share the same room but I might have expected 2 adults to be sharing the same room, you are really taking the jaffa biscuit if you think you can make your living room into a large dormitory shared by a dozen people. That is not my interpretation of the law. You don't have a big enough kitchen area, you don't have a sufficient number of toilets and bathrooms and the legal requirement for communal laundry facilities is not satisfied by loading suitcases into a car. You have broken the law, Mr. Johnson, you have broken it flagrantly and deliberately."
"I was trying to help people. Do you know what it's like looking for somewhere to live nowadays?"
"I imagine that it is not so difficult that we need landlords like you. You will pay a £1 million fine and you have 9 months to remove your residents to other accommodation and close your premises down. If you persist in running this substandard slum we will send the bulldozers."

Chris would have to wait over a year to get a trial in the Crown Court. It was a great weight on his mind. He hadn't told anyone. Best let the people at work think that the judge had given him a fine rather than let them know the truth, that he had been referred to the Crown Court because the magistrate's court could only impose a 3 year prison sentence. This way he could continue working on the Mars project during a crucial period. Chris sat at his desk, watching the first spacecraft to Mars taking off from the John Lennon International Space Centre. It looked like an aeroplane attached to the top of something the size of a Saturn moon rocket. The aeroplane was a huge spaceplane the size of a 20th century space station. The huge 3 stage rocket, the same size and several times the power of the Saturn rockets that had sent the first manned spacecraft to the moon, would be discarded once the spacecraft was in orbit. The spaceplane would fly to Mars using plasma engines, which would take six months. They hoped that by the end of the year they could perfect the new hydrogen pulse engine. That would allow the next crew to fly to Mars in two months. The countdown appeared on the screen. The number of minutes and seconds could be observed. There was no longer a voice counting down the last ten seconds. There was no sense of excitement. Mission Control, if anyone in the 2080s would have given NASA's office such a grandiose title, were not anxious or worried. There had been hours of safety checks. The mission had been cancelled twice already because the wind was blowing at 27 miles an hour or because one of the astronauts had a heavy cold. Space exploration was so safe in the 2080s that it had become boring. No danger of the astronauts being blown up on take off meant no real joy when they actually got into space. In the early days of space exploration, a safe take off and a survivable landing were something of a relief. That wasn't guaranteed. Now it was done with well tested pieces of equipment by technicians who had a ridiculous obsession with safety. Even when these men landed, they'd be working with a system that had been tested many times on the moon, using a plasma engined spacecraft of the same size travelling at the same speed. There would be no guessing. Even the satnav on a modern spacecraft derived its signal from several satellites that were already orbiting Mars and the moon. Nothing would be left to chance. The countdown on the screen went into the last few seconds. Smoke started to come from the bottom of the huge rocket that now lifted the spaceplane slowly up the tower and then into the sky. In the NASA office there was a sense of relief that the mission hadn't been cancelled again and the feeling of a good day at work. Now the launch would be shown on the national news channels that evening. The first human beings ever sent to Mars. A 5 minute story.

That evening Chris returned home to a shared house which seemed to be the scene of a political demonstration. The entrance hall was full of people sitting on sleeping bags and crash mats. A man in a suit looked as if he must be someone important.
"Good Evening," he said to Chris.
"Hello. I'm Chris."
"I'm the Mayor of North Lancashire."
"Pleased to meet you." Chris shook the man's hand.
"We're having a protest," said David, an elderly resident who Chris knew quite well. "I'm a pensioner. I can't find anywhere else to live. We are demanding the right to continue living in this house." A woman carrying a camera arrived, together with a man who had a sports bag full of microphones and stands.
"We're from UK News," said the man. The woman set up the camera on a tripod and started asking David questions.
"Why are you here?"
"I am protesting against this centre being closed."
"But the court said the accommodation is substandard."
"It is not substandard. We have a good landlord."
"If it was closed, couldn't you live somewhere else?"
"I have only my State Pension. It isn't enough money to pay the rent on a flat."
"Surely there are benefits?"
"Those benefits are limited. £1500 a month. What am I supposed to do with that? Even if I could pay the rent, how could I afford the electricity bill out of a tiny State Pension? Here I pay £1,000 a month to sleep on the floor. Bills included."

Chris had studied the history of British inventors. People like John Logie Baird, the inventor of television, or Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine. He also realised that people had ridiculed their ideas and that they had not been treated with any kindness. But Chris still wanted to be an inventor. If he could go down in history as the person who had invented the hydrogen fusion spacecraft engine, even if NASA took all the money and he still lived in a shared house, even if the fact that Chris Jones had invented the hydrogen fusion engine would only be reported on a single page of Wikipedia. But this engine, that Chris was looking at on his computer screen, had invented itself. To be more precise, his AI digital assistant had invented it. Chris had simply fed in some parameters. The hydrogen capsules, the size and shape of paracetamol tablets, are fired into the spacecraft engine by something like a machine gun. In the exhaust of the engine, they pass through a ring of lasers and explode one at a time. How many lasers of what power are required? How thick does the metal of the chamber have to be to have sufficient physical strength? At what rate should the hydrogen capsules be fired in order to reach a speed of 300,000 miles an hour without causing too much discomfort to the astronauts? Chris had simply had to email an AI Bot as if he was corresponding with another technician and clarify the answers to all of its questions. Research that had once taken a few years could now be done in a few minutes. When it was needed, the entire engine would just drop out of the 3D printer. No wonder there were 5 million unemployed. Here were 12 people, sitting in an ordinary office like a typing pool from a hundred years ago, and they were the future of space exploration.

James Johnson held a meeting of his 27 residents in the front room of the shared house.
"I've been able to pay the fine. I've cashed in my pension. That raised £1 million. And I've cashed in my stocks and shares ISA. That's got another million in it. Because we're going to stay here. I'm liasing with the solicitor and the planning department and I'm asking what I must do to improve the house to the standard required. They want a communal kitchen and laundry room? I'll build an extension. They want more bathrooms? Divide some of the big bedrooms up and have an ensuite shower in each one. They want 2 people in each room? This is a 5 bedroom house and maybe, with a few walls down the middle it can become an 8 bedroom house."
"That's 16 people," said Chris. "Not as many as before. And if you're dividing up rooms, you'll have to move an awful lot of people out while you do the work."
"Most people only stay in a shared house for a short time," said James. "I wouldn't expect that more than half of you would see this as your permanent home."
"I'm taking my driving test," said Paul. "I'm going to buy an old van and live in that. You can rent a parking space near the city centre."
"I'm looking at a caravan," said Susan. "There's this big caravan site within a mile of Oldham railway station. It's like a commuter town. It's quite easy for a working person to get a mortgage on a caravan."
"I'm staying here," said David.
"So am I," said Chris.

Chris came into work one morning to see a message from the spacecraft on it's way to Mars. A little photograph of one of the astronauts with a typed message next to it.
"Now entering final deceleration orbit. Ready to land. Expected ETA 3 hours. All systems normal." The landing would be done during working hours so that the technicians would be there in case anything went wrong. It really was just in case. This spacecraft, with these astronauts in it, had practiced landing on the moon. The spacecraft was entering an orbit that would cause the gravity of Mars to act like a brake. When the spacecraft had orbitted Mars a few times it would drop into the planet's atmosphere at the speed of a supersonic airliner. Landing was so much easier than it had been in the early days of space exploration. As Chris sat eating a doughnut with his coffee at 11 o' clock, another message appeared, "Travelling at Mach 3, entering upper atmosphere, preparing to glide down." Chris finished his coffee. Another message came. "Height 10 Km, speed Mach 2, 200 Km from landing site." A few minutes later and another message. "Height 5 Km, speed Mach 1, 50 Km from landing site." A few minutes later, "Height 1 Km, speed Mach 0.35, 10 Km from landing site." The final message came, "Height 600 M, speed Mach 0.2, 1 Km from landing site. Landing gear down. Speed Mach 0.1. Taxying onto landing site and what the hell is that flying saucer?"